Making meaning
4.3 Beyond symbolic interactionism: theoretical developments in subjectivity
4.3.2 The effect of discourses on subjectivity
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In Walkerdine’s study in the UK, it was found that girls from the middle and working classes controlled their sexuality differently. The sexualized image of working class girls was presented as having “latent pathology” whereas middle class girls portrayed a “super-girl identity”
(1997,p.199). As argued by Ball et al (2000), subjectivity is located in larger institutional and social frameworks. Subjectivity is therefore a complex construct and each perspective adds new meaning to the concept of the subject and the way in which subjectivities are formed. In the discussion that follows I present various perspectives on subjectivity and how subjectivity is formed and conclude this chapter by drawing on those perspectives that would be useful to illuminate the data for this study.
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will say for the sake of convenience, that we are dealing with a discursive formation (1972, p. 38).
A discursive space may become complicated when numerous discourses conflict during circulation and integration. How subjectivity in discourse is then formed? Davies (1989,p.233) argues that we form subjectivity in discourse through four processes: “(i) learning to categorise people, including ourselves; (ii) participating in discourses and practices that give meanings to the categories we learn; (iii) positioning oneself in a relationship to the categories and meanings given to them; (iv) recognizing the position taken and emotionally investing in the position taken”. It is through these processes that people begin to understand themselves in the world. These understandings then form the basis for interaction with others. Davies (1992, p. 122) explains:
By subjectivity we mean here the particular ways in which a person gives meaning to themselves, others and the world. Subjectivity is largely the product of discursive networks which organize and systematize social and cultural practices.
The study highlights how the principal’s subjectivity is formed through discourses when interacting. Various interaction sets were identified on the basis of an event, for example an event regarding school admission. Questions that guided the analysis were: How does the discourse affect the individual’s subjectivity? What discourses circulate in the leadership space and how does this influence subjectivity? Parker, Georgaca, Harper, McLaughlin and Stowell-Smith (1995) show how discourses influence subjectivity and the formation of identity. They point to two central elements of discourse that influence subjectivity. The first is that discourses make certain subject positions available and construct people as objects, and the second is that identity formation happens in this way as an individual may be positioned as an object and a subject within a discourse.
There are three modes of objectification that Foucault (1982) defines. In the first mode of objectification, people are classified as subjects of a particular discipline; for example, in bio- psychosocial discourses people are objectified as subjects of psychiatry and therefore mentally imbalanced. The label of ‘patient’ implies abnormality, imbalance, and difference. According to Rose (1990) this objectification positions the patient in a field of relations of power, control and governance, implying that only when the patient/ person seeks treatment will they return to
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normality and good health. In a school setting, learners are objectified as ‘deviant’, ‘abnormal’, needing corrective behaviour.
The second mode of objectification is what Foucault (1982) refers to as dividing practices. Here, a person is objectified through a process of exclusion or division either by himself or others.
Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982) state that this exclusion can take place at social and spatial levels, i.e. people are objectified by divisions of physical space. A typical example of this in the South African context is how apartheid policies divided people across racial lines to occupy certain geographic areas. Self-subjectification is the third mode of objectification where the self is recognised as the subject.
Through these three modes of objectification, people become subjects of a discourse. Foucault notes that there are two meanings to the word subject: “subject to someone else by control and dependence, and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge (1982, p. 211). For example, in school discourses, a child that misbehaves is construed as a ‘deviant’ subject and as objects of psychiatry (poor social behaviour). The child is objectified as abnormal. The final mode of objectification will result in a process of self-subjectification where the child comes to recognize him/herself as a subject of the discourse and positions himself as I am the culprit.
Power and subjectivity are intertwined. Knowledge and power are also closely linked. Expert knowledge guaranteed positions of power. Palmer explains:
…the therapist gains their status, prestige and salary by claiming access to expert knowledges guaranteed by degrees and job positions. This knowledge is constructed as true. This is why patients listen, even reluctantly. By contrast, the expert knowledge of madness in medieval times was theological, while the Church, and the bodies of (religious) law were the institutions which promoted and maintained the discourse, along with the special set of practices undertaken by those priests who exorcised demons.(2003, p. 6) Therefore, the social structures (e.g., the Church in the above extract, the school in the case of this study), power relations in the modern world, and personal subjectivity are all critically constructed out of discourse.
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